GOOD MORNING and welcome to Morning Tech, your pentaquark in the collider of EU tech politics and policy.

— WHAT’S HAPPENING

DATA PROTECTION: Yesterday marked the first negotiations between Parliament and Council over the EU’s new data protection rules. Everyone I talked said it went well, but the first topic was Chapter 5, which deals with data transfers outside the EU, an area where Parliament and Council are close. Multiple parliamentary sources told me there were preliminary agreements on “non-controversial” subjects, such as binding corporate rules, the role of the EU data protection board, safeguards and territorial scope.

THAT SAID, Rapporteur Jan Albrecht told negotiators that elements of the chapter might need to be reopened if Europe’s top court comes back with a ruling on the Schrems-Facebook case before negotiations close. That case involves the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor agreement, which lets the likes of Google and Facebook legally process Europeans’ data. The Court of Justice of the European Union might (or might not) undermine the legal basis of this deal.

DRONE REPORT: British Conservative MEP Jacqueline Foster has published her draft, own-initiative report into the civilian use of drones, which Parliament’s transport committee will vote on in September. Assuming it makes it through to plenary in October, this would be the first time Parliament has set out a position on the subject. As with an April 2014 Commission communication on drones, Foster’s report stresses the need for clear privacy rules when people use drones. And, in line with the stance of the European Aviation Safety Agency, she pushes for globally harmonized drone safety rules. The European Cockpit Association, an umbrella body for national pilots’ associations that is very concerned about drones, told me Foster’s draft report was a good step forward. http://bit.ly/1HtzN04

MOBILE INDUSTRY CALLS FOR TOTAL OVERHAUL OF TELECOMS REGULATION: It’s a rare thing for the many telecoms and digital industry associations to appear on stage together, especially with consumer advocates BEUC thrown into the mix. But they did just that at ETNO’s summer drinks last night, joined by POLITICO’s Playbook. The GSMA used the occasion to say the whole EU telecoms framework should be thrown out in 2016 and rewritten from a blank sheet of paper. None of the seven groups on stage likes the French and German idea of regulating platforms either, though several said it’s important to first define platform and any alleged problems, rather than give a blanket yes or no.

UBER DECISION: Germany’s ban on an Uber service faces a probe by the European Commission, as the U.S. ride-hailing company called on Brussels to help in its fight with national regulators on the continent. The FT has more: http://on.ft.com/1MsSbJU

LHC STRIKES AGAIN: Europe’s grandest science project, CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, has helped researchers detect another new particle. Last time it was the Higgs boson; this time it’s the pentaquark, hypothesized since the 1960s but unseen until now. As the BBC reports, scientists have previously thought they had spotted a pentaquark, but subsequent experiments undermined those findings. Patrick Koppenburg, the physics co-ordinator for the LHCb experiment, said: “There is quite a history with pentaquarks, which is also why we were very careful in putting this paper forward…There is no way that what we see could be due to something else other than the addition of a new particle that was not observed before.” And what does this all mean? It could help us better understand how matter is made up. http://bbc.in/1K5hRMp

RIGHT TO BE FORGOTTEN: The Guardian has spotted hidden code in Google’s online transparency report that, it reported Tuesday, reveals over 95 percent of European right-to-be-forgotten requests come from private individuals rather than politicians and high-profile criminals. However, Google said this data came from a six-month test that it discontinued “because the data was not reliable enough for publication.” The company told me it will release more accurate data in the autumn. http://bit.ly/1SkQVdp

SATELLITE CAPTURE: A week ago we reported on a Swiss proposal for dealing with space junk, which involved a “Pac-Man” device that would scoop up dead satellites then self-destruct along with them. As ZDNet reports, an Italian firm called D-Orbit is working on a decommissioning device that can be installed in spacecraft before they are launched. The first official use of D-Orbit’s technology is scheduled for next year. http://zd.net/1JflRHk

FLASH DOWN THE PAN: Adobe’s Flash has long been a security nightmare, frequently providing vulnerabilities that nefarious people exploit to attack users’ computers. The recent hacking of Hacking Team showed that the Italian maker of exploitation software makes good use of previously undisclosed flaws in the multimedia-playing software, and now the maker of the Firefox browser has had enough. Mozilla has tweaked Firefox to block Flash elements in webpages by default (users can still play them if they opt in.) http://mzl.la/1I07ABN Meanwhile, new Facebook Security Chief Alex Stamos has called for Adobe to kill off Flash, so website operators can finally be pushed to switch to more secure HTML5 technology: http://bit.ly/1M3tPZ9

GOOGLE REVAMPS MAPS PROCESS: Having suspended the ability of people to edit Google Maps back in May, the company is preparing to relaunch the capability with some crucial changes. Pranksters had changed the maps to include things like a giant Android mascot urinating on the Apple logo. When the editing facility reopens from next month, the Maps community will have greater power to moderate the changes that are made. “We will be selecting mappers in each region and offering them the opportunity to become a ‘Regional Lead’ on Map Maker. Edits made in a Lead’s region will be reviewed by both Google’s automated moderation systems and by the Regional Lead themselves,” Product Manager Pavithra Kanakarajan wrote in a blog post. http://bit.ly/1IXudrh

LAUNCH YOUR OWN SMARTPHONE: It is now ridiculously cheap to launch a new line of smartphones. As Bloomberg reports, Chinese manufacturers will build a new smartphone for as little as $20 (€18) apiece, with a minimum order of 50 units. According to the head of international sales at one Shenzhen manufacturer: “It’s cheaper and faster because the supply chain has become so mature and standardized.” http://bloom.bg/1HZjJbL

UBER HERE BID: The bidding war around Nokia’s Here mapping service no longer includes Uber, according to a New York Times report. Uber had reportedly been thinking of shelling out as much as $3 billion (€2.7 billion) for the business, but the most likely suitor is now a consortium of German car manufacturers who use Here in their vehicles. http://nyti.ms/1K5xOCn

FACEBOOK CONCIERGE: According to The Information, Facebook is testing a “concierge” service within its Messenger app that would connect users to real people for product-buying advice. The service is code named “Moneypenny,” apparently. It sounds like quite a specific use case, so it is difficult to compare the concept directly with the artificial intelligence-driven likes of Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana, but the comparisons are inevitable. Here’s a Guardian write-up, as the source requires a subscription: http://bit.ly/1Lelr8r

— WHAT’S COMING

PATENT RULING: On Thursday, the Court of Justice of the European Union is expected to rule on a long-running case about standard-essential patents (SEPs) — patents that absolutely have to be used if a certain technology is to be implemented, and which are therefore supposed to be licensed on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. The case involves Chinese phone companies Huawei, which holds a European patent on 4G technology, and ZTE, which uses it. Huawei sued ZTE in Germany in 2011 after licensing talks broke down. The Court will need to say whether it thinks the lawsuit constitutes an abuse of a dominant position. The Commission has already taken a position on this issue in cases involving Samsung and Motorola, where it tried to restrict the ability of SEP owners to unilaterally break off negotiations. http://bit.ly/1K5Tz4X

VESTAGER APPEARANCE: The competition commissioner will appear before Parliament’s economic committee on Thursday for an “exchange of views,” where she is almost certain to be asked about a range of tech antitrust cases. http://bit.ly/1dYsJQm

DEPARTING CEO: Toshiba’s Chief Executive Hisao Tanaka will step down in September along with other board members including Vice Chairman Norio Sasaki to take responsibility for accounting irregularities, according to Reuters, which cited sources familiar with the matter. http://reut.rs/1f20FfM